


You Just Haven't Found the Right Person Yet

by IAmStoryteller



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Aromantic, Asexuality, Books, Depression, Gen, Hope, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love, POV First Person, Please don't read if you think it'll upset you, Stress, and hurt you, failing, trigger warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 09:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11598159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmStoryteller/pseuds/IAmStoryteller
Summary: A series of small shorts about introspective looks into my own life.  I normally don't write stories about myself, but I wanted to give it a try.





	You Just Haven't Found the Right Person Yet

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this includes themes of: asexuality, aromantic, depression, suicide, anxiety, stress, family issues, etc. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

**You Just Haven’t Found the Right Person Yet**

_And darling, you should know_  
_that I have fantasies about being alone._  
_It's like love is a lesson_  
_that I can't learn._ -Death Cab for Cutie “A Diamond and a Tether”

“Oh, sweetie, don’t say that. You just haven’t found the right person yet. Once you do, you’ll be so happy,” said concerned aunt #1. I sit there at the dining room table of my great aunt’s house, smiling politely. Not for the first time and not for the last time, certainly, I have been asked if I met any nice boys lately.

Since I was a kid myself, I told my parents that didn’t want any kids. And I never dreamed of marriages, white-picket fences and the whole she-bang that I’m supposed to want and crave with every fiber of my being. My parents, for all their flaws and problems, never minded it. The rest of my extended family, however, couldn’t fathom that I was perfectly fine being alone.

There’s a difference between being alone and lonely. There’s no possibly way I can be lonely. I live with both my loud and pushy parents, my sister, my sister’s boyfriend, my sister’s two sons, and my youngest sister, plus a cat and a dog that don’t get along. Not to mention, I have internet friends and the few friends I have are similar to me so that we don’t have to be attached at the hip all the freaking time. I like being alone and honestly, I don’t spend nearly as much time being alone as I would like in my life.

In my family, specifically my mom’s side, everyone married their first boyfriend or girlfriend and started a family usually before they were thirty. I’m 27 now, a few months shy of my 28th birthday, and I have never brought a boyfriend to family functions. Instead of news about my (non-existent) love-life, my mother must tell them of my new academic endeavors, or my new interests in such-and-such-a-field, or how many books I have now as opposed to last time. It doesn’t bother me. I’m relatively proud of my accomplishments because I worked hard.

But sometimes, like when I’m forced to family functions to interact with people I barely tolerate, the all-intrusive questions arise from well-meaning, but totally stuck in the 1950s’ mindset, aunts and uncles. (How is it that I’m the only quiet, introverted person in my family? Tell me this!) Family functions tire my poor introverted self out within an hour and I want to go home to my room and my books.

When I’m the only one of my cousins that hasn’t decided to start a family or have boyfriends/girlfriends, I’m the weird but smart one. Most of my cousins totally resent me, even if they don’t say it out loud, but I can feel it when I go to family functions and maybe I deserve it for not being normal and focused on other things.

I realized a long time ago that I am, in fact, asexual and aromantic. I was happy that there were actually words for it.

Does that mean that I don’t like romance at all? No. I just don’t want it for me. I’m happy for other people when they find the person they want to spend their lives with and make a family. That’s a wonderful dream. It’s just not for me. 

I spent my entire like bombarded with images of heterosexual love. So if people want to hold hands or cuddle in public, go for it. Luckily with the attempts at diversity, there are more and more gay, lesbian, transgender couples (not as much as there should be, though), although most of it is in the fandoms of anime/manga, comic books, and television shows. Since I am a writer and I am asexual and aromantic, I read all sorts of different couples and how people interpret romance. Because romance is a part of life and books don’t sell without a couple to ship and no one will make me believe otherwise.

(It’s probably why I read kids’ books, because lo and behold, there’s a general lack of romance in them. Teen and young adult have tons more romance).

I do have asexual characters, thrown in many of my stories. One in particular is my favorite and he appeared a lot more than I expected in the book about his younger brother. It should be okay to love who you want in this world—it is what I believe, but it should also be okay not to want to be love or have romance.

So, what do I say when I hear that I just haven’t met the right person yet? If I wasn’t a kind-hearted person, I would be sarcastic and quip that “I will never find the right person, because I barely leave the house.” But instead, I smile, awkwardly, remind myself that I am required out of blood ties to love these people no matter their backwards thinking, and say “Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

**Hi, Depression, Meet Anxiety**

_It seems like every day’s the same_  
_and I’m left to discover on my own_  
_It seems like everything is gray_  
_and there’s no color to behold_  
_They say it’s over and I’m fine again, yeah_ –Seether “Fine Again”

-My Mind, Morning When I Wake Up-

Me: Today is going to be a good day. I just have to stay positive.

Depression, barges in and laughs manically like a supervillain: Oh, not today, sweetheart. Let me just remind you of the many ways that your life is terrible and how you are never going to do anything right. 

Anxiety, waltzes in, giggling: Oh, Big D, isn’t just grand? I’m here today to work too! I’ll just remind her of all her responsibilities and how she fails all the time to control anything in her life.

Me: Wait, what…?

Depression: Oh, Little A, it is grand! Are you going to bring up something awkward that she did from several years ago?

Anxiety: Yes, perfect. And you can totes give her Writer’s Block, so she feels worse about quitting her full-time job with benefits and vacation and possibility of raises and promotions to focus more on her writing and less on making money. And that she hates her part-time job in menial labor, at minimum wage.

Depression: Remind her that her parents are completely irresponsible with money but even if she as all the money, she has no control over what they do. And she is helping raise her nephews with her sister and sister’s boyfriend when she never wanted kids.

Me: I don’t feel so good…

Depression and Anxiety, walk off into the sunset together.

Me: Wait, the day is already over…!?!

**You Can’t Eat Books**

_Everybody needs a place_  
_somewhere that’s warm and safe_  
_a shelter from this crazy world we’re in_  
_but tonight I let the rain inside_ -O.A.R. “Peace” 

Being an adult is a fucking shit-storm of what can go wrong next and how every day is an experiment in problem solving, like whether you want to have electricity so the food that you just bought with most of your paycheck for the week doesn’t go bad or your car finally fixed so it stop sounding like one of those Mickey Mouse put-put, near-death, cars that struggle to go up the hill in the cartoon shorts?

I tell myself that you can’t eat books. You can’t use books as money. Books are only good to read and escape real life.

My compulsion to have more books, to have all books, means that I am not allow to go to a store with a book section. These are some of the places I can’t go if I want to be a Responsible Adult™: Barnes and Nobles, completely out, unless I plan to the minute detail of how I’m paying for this book; Shoprite and other big supermarkets with book sections, nope; Walmart, Kmart, Target, kind of, as long as I have a list and get in and get out, mission success; The Main Library in town, due to the ongoing book sale of books for a dollar to 5 dollars (because I can’t even afford that, because some inevitably goes wrong that I will need that money for something more important).

You can’t eat books.

Thank God, the gods, the aliens, etc. for free public libraries with no book sales.

**Why Failing is OK (Sometimes) Or Alternatively How to Fail Gracefully**

_So a day when you've lost yourself completely_  
_Could be a night when your life ends_  
_Such a heart that will lead you to deceiving_  
_All the pain held in your_  
_Hands are shaking cold_  
_Your hands are mine to hold_  
_Speak to me, when all you got to keep is strong_  
_Move along, move along like I know you do_  
_And even when your hope is gone_ –All-American Rejects “Move Along”

In the society that my generation grew up in, failure is not an option. It is not our fault that it happened, but our parents’ fault. Perhaps our parents had good intentions to protect us from failing or losing, but it ill-prepared me and others my age for failing miserably in life. We are told that you can be anything in this world.

But you can’t, not really. You have to either have to be the luckiest person in the world or born into money. Yes, hard work is important and there are many that work hard and gain a better life, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. Basically, if you’re born poor, you are more likely to poor for the rest of your miserable excuse for a life, just like me, no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try.

Society, the way the world works nowadays, are stacked against me and my fellow nearly thirty-year-olds struggling to find a way to achieve our dreams. Every day is a struggle for survival—and it’s hard.

I was told that if you did well in school, got a degree at college, you would be able to find a career, buy a house, and live a good life as a decent member of society.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I’m not done.

Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahaha

Those things may have been possibly in the 1960s and 1970s for the average American, but in 2017, it is certainly not. I have three degrees, experience in four different fields, and a minimum wage part-time job that I can barely survive on a week-to-week basis, let alone day-to-day. In addition, I have forty thousand dollars of debt that is basically impossible to pay back and expenses like housing, food, clothing (I haven’t bought new clothes in two years), electricity, cell phone, internet (the last two a necessity for me now), water, gas/heat, car insurance, taxes, television and helping raise my sister’s two sons on top of my already stressful situation.

My father is a recovering, and I use that term loosely, drug addict, who never fails to make things indefinitely harder for me.

My mother is a shopaholic bitter old lady, who blames everything on my dad, because ironically, he’s not entirely to blame.

My youngest sister is an emotional teenager with too much attitude and will cry on the fly if you look at her funny.

My sister is a stressed out mother of two boys—one is a toddler and the other is a one-year-old. And my sister’s boyfriend and the father of the two boys is a stressed out father, trying to save money to make things better, while also paying child support for another son with a different woman.

And I am supposed to be rock that holds everyone together. I am not allowed to get mad. Or sad. Or be anything but calm and steady, otherwise I am the person in the wrong, even though my entire family is made up of emotionally high-maintenance temperamental egotistical assholes.

Between the facts that I did everything I was supposed to do, according to society at large, and that everything I did was basically worthless, I struggle with failing at life. One could argue that society failed me and the millions of others like me. One could argue that the baby boomers and the generation of our parents failed us. Both are probably true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better, like I was the one that did something wrong.

I failed so far at life.

And I have to be okay with that, not because I give up.

Because even if you fail, even if it is a test at school or get fired from a job or mess up somehow in a relationship, giving up and settling is not an option.

Fail, but learn from the fail to become better, to become a stronger person, to become a kinder person. Fail so that when you finally succeed and life becomes better you remember the struggles it took to get there to the place where you are happy and successful.

Hope is never gone, even if some think hope is a futile exercise in idealism.

**What Really Matters (Death and All Her Friends)**

_I believe that tomorrow is stronger than yesterday_  
_And I believe that your head is the only thing in your way_  
_I wish that you could see your scars turn in to beauty_  
_I believe that today it's okay to be not okay_ –Christina Perri “I Believe”

Dying, well almost dying, can put your life back into perspective. Two years ago, I almost died. I had a tumor in my intestines that blocked all the nasty stuff from coming out and my body almost poisoned itself. My whole life I threw up on a regular basis, making it hard for me to eat certain things or a lot of something. There was a time when I didn’t throw up, during college, and I gained some weight, a lot of weight actually.

Then after I graduated, I started getting pains in my stomach, then the throwing up every day happened. I couldn’t keep food down. I tried everything—gluten free, diary free, meat free. There was a time when all I could eat was crackers and water and I weighed as much as my tiny sister. It took two years for doctors after doctors to find out what was wrong with me. 

Since I had depression and anxiety since I was a teenager, it grew tenfold. There were nights when I was up in the middle of the night, crying into the toilet, wanting to die. I never told anyone but I strongly considered killing myself. It would be too easy, with the amount of drugs and weapons available where I live.

The tumor was small enough that they couldn’t see it on the scans or whatever, thinking it was my pancreas or kidneys or something in that vicinity. It took me passing out all the time to finally force myself to the hospital and demanding treatment until they found out what was wrong with me and fixing me.

The month in the hospital was literally the worst time in my life, even more with living with the sickness. Confined to bed, required to ask for help to go to the bathroom from strangers because I was hooked up to several machines that were keeping me alive like a freaking science experiment in a comic book, drugged too much that I couldn’t think straight even thought I was actually working on my Master’s Degree at the time and had to get the work done, and listening to the other patients in pain and agony was torture.

I may have been an introvert, but I always value my independence and ability to multi-task, even when I’m not working or studying, I’m always multi-tasking a bunch of projects and chores and errands.

Honestly, my parents were always pains to me and still are, but I was so screwed up that I couldn’t really know what the doctors were saying to me or understand them. It was then that I realized that if I didn’t go to the hospital, I would have died a slow and painful death and it would have broken my family to pieces. Suicide is a NOT a selfish act. I understand why it’s an option—because sometimes depression and other mental illnesses are too much and you go this dark place that you think you never can get back from and it’s hopeless. The fact that I consider sometimes because of my depression makes me feel like a selfish person, though. As the oldest child in my family, if I had died, my family would break. My parents would never recover and my sisters would never know what to do with anything. The people that loved me would suffer.

And as a too-kind person, I don’t like hurting others.

After the surgery and the healing process, I ate normally again and I was better. But the damage and trauma of living with almost dying is a struggle, especially since it exacerbated my depression and anxiety. Some days I don’t want to function, but I mostly push on through it and sometimes I just turn off my mind and glide through the day. (Unless of course someone says something to push a button and then I’m fucked for a while).

When times get dark and too rough, the thought will pass by mind, but then I think of all the people that need me and would be hurt without me, and I dismiss it like a fly buzzing around your ear on a summer’s night, mostly.

I may be aromantic, but love is what really matters. Love of your family, your friends, and your lovers/partners, love everyone and be kind until death. It is what really matters.

Because it’s okay not to be okay some days.


End file.
